Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

Africa’s invisible epidemics

Having witnessed really frightening times, it is the level heads and human compassion that stay in the memory

issue 14 March 2020

Africa

‘Ah, Africa,’ the French scientist sighed contentedly. This was 1995 and all around us was an Ebola epidemic ravaging Kikwit, a village in what they now call the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘No lawyers to sue us!’ I had just asked him why doctors in the local hospital ward had shown me Ebola victims, lying in beds next to patients suffering milder diseases.

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